Do You Need The Church To Have A Relationship With God?

Makiah Green is a woman that has a lot to say and, most definitely, needs to be heard. She writes, she is an activist, she raps, and – in her own words – fights for the empowerment and enlightenment of “marginalized communities through film, television, and the written word.” She is also an active participant in her community and contributes to numerous online publications and platforms.

Green has a unique perspective on everyday issues that most would take for granted and one such issue is her belief in her church which she, at one time, “held so dearly” but has now decided she can do without.

Green says she decided to “exist outside the church” because, among other things, she couldn’t take any more of the “routine state-sanctioned violence that is being inflicted on my people” while the church remained silent about it. She said she needed to remove herself from what she says is “a system that claims to value my soul” while it fails “to show up for my black body.”

In the time that she has taken the step to move away from the church, she has come to a few realizations and conclusions (20 “lessons”, to be precise) which include the fact that “God is not a man.”

Makiah also says, how much money you have in the bank isn’t an indicator of how much God has blessed, or forsaken, you as “material success isn’t an indicator of [His] presence.” Anyone thinking she has cut herself off from her religion can rest assured that she is just avoiding the physical building – and not God – because she doesn’t “need a church home in order to facilitate a relationship with [Him].”

In a lesson that would probably ring true with many church believers she touches on the leaders of faith by saying that, “these pastors ain’t loyal” and that “anyone claiming to have all the answers clearly doesn’t.”